Strawberry Shortcake

Kristen’s visits to Muncie typically occurred in summer. Often, we would pick our friend Tierra up and hoof it around town. Back then, we had time to waste. Although we were in our late teens, not one of the three of us had a Driver’s License. Downtown, the buildings were white concrete. The sun would [...]

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Sitting Vigil

Prompt: Write about a time when you were content as a child
——
Christmas morning, it’s the same nearly every year. My happiness in the holiday comes from quiet repose, in the dark hours before the house awakens. There is something about that moment, glittery packages still perfectly wrapped, and the rustle of the felt stocking that [...]

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Plastic Lawn Chairs

This is based on a prompt from William Carlos Williams’ Poem “The Red Wheelbarrow”

so much depends upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.
The prompt was to write about a scene outdoors with reference to the poem
—–
When I moved out of my parents’ house in the summer of 2008, I realized that so much my concept [...]

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Genetics

I.
Personality is at least twenty percent genetic. My personality belongs, in part, to my parents. I am fascinated by their secret lives before my birth. I strain my ears for any hint of these distant people. I want to meet them, to sit and have coffee and joke with them, to find out who they [...]

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On the Various Uses of Chicken Noodle Soup

Playdough
After she comes home from work, my mother makes chicken noodle soup. The chicken, its skin coated with ground peppercorns, boils into chicken stock on the stove. I peek over the counter as she drops eggs into the flour one by one, then stirs it up with a fork. “Do you want to [...]

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I Remember Once

(This assignment was very strange. 10 years of life in 2 pages, using only sentences with 3 words.)
Ten years old. In seventh grade. On January Twenty-third. I met Tierra. Joanna introduced us. I was mean. I was a clod. She forgave me. An honor student. Bright and charming. Took her SAT’s. And her ACT’s. In [...]

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Becoming Aquarius

The grass growing in the shade of the porch is rich and green, the rest a sick yellowish-brown. In this particular snap shot, the minuscule, lush portion of the lawn has been flooded out with water from the hose. Pale brown liquid seeps up through the sod, puddling around the trees, ruining my grandparents’ already [...]

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Bookworm Larvae

We are riding in the backseat of the car on the way to Flagstaff. As the youngest, it is a requirement that I sit in the middle, squashed between my two older brothers. They have been sleeping almost the whole way, either with their butts pressing against my legs, sandy blonde heads against the windows, [...]

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Sexual Selection

Male Pygmy Auklets (A. pygmaea) grow large head crests for sexual selection. I did not know this when I opened the box my long distance boyfriend Adam sent me. We had only been “dating” a few months, both of us still wrapped up in that new relationship smell. I called him my gypsy, after [...]

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The Subjectivity of a Name

My name is Nevada. I do not particularly care if you pronounce it “Nuh-vah-duh” or “Ne-Vaa-Daa” or “Neh-vah-deh” like my Spanish friend, Rosilio. Speaking of Spanish, my name is the Spanish word for “snowfall”. I was born on a day that was “asshole deep in snow.” Or at least, that’s what my mother tells me. [...]

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